CANNES (France) • Val Kilmer has made an intriguing and bittersweet return to the big screen at the Cannes film festival in a new documentary charting his stratospheric rise and later fall in Hollywood through his own home recordings.

The Amazon-produced documentary, Val, is a tender portrait of the actor, 61, whose career has seen more ups and downs than the fighter jets in his breakout film Top Gun (1986).

Most striking is his voice, turned into a near-incomprehensible rasp by treatment for throat cancer.

It has not quite ended his career. He is due to reprise his iconic role as Iceman later this year in the long-awaited sequel Top Gun: Maverick.

But the documentary shows him as a shadow of his former self, reduced to a life of signing autographs at conventions - as he puts it, "selling his old self".

The film draws heavily from his huge library of home videos - he carried a camera with him throughout his life - providing intimate behind-the-scenes footage from his hits, including The Doors (1991), Tombstone (1993) and Batman Forever (1995).

The Hollywood Reporter described the film as "agile and alive", and praised the frankness of its star: "How many certified movie stars would allow themselves to be filmed so physically altered, and on the inescapable downslope of an A-list career?"

There is a juicy clash with director John Frankenheimer on the set of The Island Of Dr Moreau (1996), a flop that marked the start of his career's decline in the late 1990s, but the documentary mostly downplays his obsessive - and reportedly exasperating - work habits.

"The film-makers sometimes gloss over aspects of Kilmer's legacy that would have been fascinating to interrogate, such as his reputation for being difficult with his directors," wrote Screen Daily.

But it said there was "a fragility to Val - and not just in Kilmer's physical presence - that is unexpectedly moving".

At 17, Kilmer was the youngest person to be accepted to New York's Juilliard school and he longed to make serious films, only to find himself in a series of schlocky blockbusters and expensive flops.

Chastened by a decade or more of low-budget movies, he was mounting a comeback in the 2010s with a successful stage show about writer Mark Twain that he hoped to turn into a film, when he was struck by cancer.

Kilmer has two children, Mercedes, 29, and Jack, 26, with ex-wife, actress Joanne Whalley, 59.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE